


Escape Number Two

by 21quincys



Category: Homestuck, Sword Art Online
Genre: ...Kinda, ...nailed it honestly (fuck), Depression, Humanstuck, Seriously so much cursing sorry, Suicide Attempt, They're like fuckin' middle schoolers too, Trans Male Character, Wow that got intense fast, also there'll prolly be davekat, cursing, idk just don't read it if ur easily trigger, it's KK, karkat is trans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-05-18 00:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5890447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/21quincys/pseuds/21quincys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat has exactly ninety-nine problems in the real world, and at least one of them has to do with being trapped in his real body. After a somewhat disastrous attempt at escape from this fucking hell called Earth, a friend suggests taking up a new hobby... Virtual reality gaming.</p><p>And that would be the exact second that everything went shithive maggots.</p><p>[this was actually discontinued, sorry]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue..? (Pieces of broken memories)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, so, this is the result of only having watched the first season of the SAO anime and having just finished the fourth novel. And thinking about Davekat constantly. I'll warn you now, this'll probably be Davekat. Shitty Davekat, at that. So, yeah, I'm out. (Posted at 12:44 AM, February 3, 2016.)
> 
> (Also, this was written- At least the first bit was written- While listening to This Is Gospel by Panic! at the Disco. Also where the chapter title came from.)

Ever since Karkat can remember, he's been sick of... well, everything. His body, his mind, his home, his family... Everything. Even his friends, sometimes. And sometimes that's just too much. That's why he slips away in the halls, away from everything, ignoring Sollux asking him what's wrong, ignoring Terezi brushing it off as hormones (or something), and ignoring the teacher's that'll count him absent the next few classes. And days. And months, and years, and eternities. Because, really, he's been absent for a while.

Fast forward through four more hours of hiding in the bathroom before the final bell, going in  front of the school and getting in his brother's car more wordlessly than is natural, and hiding in his room immediately after getting home. Pulling out the baggie full of the pill bottles with two or three pills left that he forgot to take, at various points in time. Maybe, with luck, he'll figure out something lethal. 

* * *

 

It's really fucking dark, and he tastes blood. Something below him is soft. Something on his arm is warm. Fuck, too warm! His eyes are open, and it's not dark. He tries to swing his arm a bit, but the hand is holding it down. No, no, no, this isn't what was supposed to happen! Nobody was supposed to find him until he was gone! Fucking... Great. Great, now it'll all get worse, just like he knew it would.

The hand is his brother's. Kankri immediately starts talking about how worried they've all been, and Karkat immediately wants him to shut the fuck up.

* * *

 

Rehab is over, and Sollux is staring at him from the backseat. Like a prompt, only a fucking useless one, because Karkat's fucking useless and he can't understand anything and

No. This isn't how he's supposed to think. He's supposed to think the way the counselor (that he's still going to have to visit every week) thinks he should. So he just sits there, silent, until

"Well? How'd it fucking go? Were you re-tramatithed by the hot counthelor or thomething?"

"Shut up, she was barely above average."

"Oh, c'mon, I'm a young, hormonal, cith, thtraight-ithh fuckboy. I think anything with boobth and an ath ith hot." Yeah, that's Sollux- Sorry, _Thollux_ \- For you. Young, horny, and obnoxious.

"I know, I know, jesus fuck." Yep, same old routine. It was actually almost comfortable by now.

"Anywayth, I found thomething online that might interetht you?" Okay, that, admittedly, caught Karkat's attention. Sollux was holding out a packet of papers, stapled together. "I ended up doing thome rethearch, and while you aren't really a gamer, thith might be jutht enough to get your lame ath moving when you're really fucked up."

The papers are blog posts, something around ten of them, from the blog of a (grammatically incompetent) trans gamer that, to put it simply, might have found a way out of dysphoria. VRMMOs. And, you know, maybe- _Maybe_ \- It's worth a shot.

 

 


	2. Chapter One..? (I am not permanent)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, shit, an update. One that I'm kinda lowkey forcing myself to write even though I kinda just wanna sleep rn but I need to get into the actual story instead of giving up one chapter through like I normally do. Um. Anyways! I wrote this while listening to Give Up (album, not song, I don't think they have a song called Give Up actually) by The Postal Service (who I may or may not have just gotten like... really into). Hope you enjoy, 'cause there's not likely to be another chapter for a while.
> 
> (Also I like... Just realized how ooc Sollux was in the first chapter. Sorry.)
> 
> [Posted at 7:10 on February 21, 2016]

It's past midnight, almost late (for me), and I'm not ready to play. I'll look out of place. I'll move wrong. I'll be scared, even though I shouldn't be. Games are all safe now.

Except that safe can be relevant, and Mituna sure isn't safe now. Poor guy went through some serious shit, and he's still fucked over after three years. What if I got stuck? But, no. I've read things about the way an Amusphere works. I won't get stuck, most likely. And if I did, I mean, I wouldn't be leaving much. Half my friends are assholes, and the other half know how to deal with that shit.

And there's the other doubts. I'm a noob. What if I end up fucking up, badly? I mean, there's nobody in there that I know. Even Sollux doesn't plan on starting until next week. He always makes such a big deal about starting VRMMO games, which is weird, because he plays at least a hundred on other consoles. Regularly.

I don't know quite how to pass as a guy, too. I mean, looking like one is part of it, but acting like one is just as important. And, let's face it, most of the reason the kids at school call me "him" is either because they're friends with me, they're younger and a bit scared of our agegroup, or they don't want to be yelled at by teachers. Or Kankri. An angry Kankri is the worst Kankri.

Well, if it goes horribly, who'd really mind some noob just dissappearing?

"Here goes nothing." And I've lifted the Amusphere to my head.

 

* * *

 

 

After a weird startup sequence, a calibration, and an age confirmation, I'm in an empty black expanse with the Alternia Online (god, what a dumb name, really, developers?) logo and a start button floating in front of me. Pressing the button puts me with a character design thing. First is gender. My hand shakes a bit before landing on male. I'm used to doing this on the computer, but it's a bit different when it feels so real like this does. It feels like somebody should be popping out and telling me I can't use the wrong gender setting. Who even gives a fuck, though? It's a game. I use the name Karkat, which just happens to have the right number of letters, and let it choose a random last name. I end up setting the settings I can change (which are very few, it's just height, length of arms, torso, and legs, and hair) to pretty close to what I have in real life. Apparently the rest of it's decided by blood color, which I can either choose myself or have chosen randomly. I go with the random choice, because it doesn't seem to affect fighting ability or anything. I do think I read that it's easier for warmer colors to train in psionics and easier for cooler colors to train in physical strength, but that doesn't really matter to me. I'll let nature (but not really nature I guess) have one more chance to get something right.

And then I'm done. A screen with something a bit like the beginning of a Star Wars movie scrolls by.

 

_Your name is KARKAT VANTAS. You're SIX SWEEPS OLD. You're a LIME BLOOD living with your lusus, CRABDAD._

 

It goes on for a bit, but most of it's just trivial bullshit. I perk up a bit when it mentions that we live in a fairly brutal society, but then sag when it tells me that killing higher blooded trolls than what I am could have a penalty.

And now I'm in what seems like a bedroom, but where the bed would be is a weird slime... pod... thing. I tap on it's surface with two finger of my left hand and a small message pops up. 

 

_This is your RECUPRACOON. Would you like to rest?_

_Yes/No_

 

I pick _No_ and go across the room to the door. Upon opening it, I get a message telling me that my lusus wants to strife. Well, what the hell. Why not pick yes. Besides, I just started playing, it's probably, like, a training battle. A tutorial battle. And I'm now in some kind of living room (although it doesn't look lived in at all) with a giant crab monster. What the hell even is a lusus, anyway?! There's a pick your weapon screen. It tells me that whatever kind of weapon I choose I'll be basically stuck with. I just click on what looks the coolest without being a literal fucking sword and end up holding two fairly basic sickles. And the fight begins.

I'm decent at parrying his hits, and our health bars are both going down a bit. Mine's going down a bit too fast for comfort, but, then, his is going at a similar rate. When we're both almost to yellow, it freezes and a message says that the first to go down into yellow is the loser in a domestic lusus strife. When the strife resumes, he's the first to go into the yellow.

Hell yeah.

I look up at the clock and see that, in real time, it's about one am. Maybe I'll log off soon. But first, I finish the tutorial-esque bit. This could be better than I expected.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, like, should I tag the whole lime blood Karkat thing or not? (I totally headcanon candy red blooded trolls to just be mutations of what's left of the lime bloods.)
> 
> Also, weird POV switch. I'm gonna have the prologue stay as it is for now, I think it'll be easier to write in this POV from now on, though. We can just say that the prologue is weird, how prologues often are.


	3. end notes?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> yo so this is officially discontinued but here's some stuff of me saying why and all that
> 
> [uploaded 5-14-16 at 5:30 pm]

hey, it's quincy. i'm actually discontinuing this fic for a lot of reasons, the first being that it's just. not that well written lmao. 

but the second is that, okay, it's a cool concept, but i was going in the wrong direction. see, using a VRMMO to escape dysphoria wouldn't help anything, at least for some people. the contrast with real life would most likely become too much, at least for karkat, who, in this, was very depressed and suicidal, not thinking he had much to live for in the real world. he would probably become something of an addict, spending more and more time playing/thinking about the game. eventually he might spend so much time in the game that he maybe forgot to go back to the real world and accidentally starved himself or something. he also might do it on purpose, actually, given how depressed he was. 

and i didn't even introduce dave in this yet, but he'd be just as likely, even more so, to fall into such an addiction. in real life, he probably wouldn't eat that much anyways, too, and his bro prolly wouldn't make him go to school and stuff, so the probablity of him starving in the game would probably be even higher. also, i think i read somewhere that if someone ur related to has ever been addicted to something, ur more likely to get addicted to something, and roxy was dave's mom, probably. i don't actually remember tbh.

but yeah, there's my trash reasons. iunno. bye.


End file.
